


Sunspot

by aintweproudriff



Series: Superhero AU [1]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: M/M, Prompt Fill, Superhero Au!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-04 13:33:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12169890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aintweproudriff/pseuds/aintweproudriff
Summary: Prompt: "You have... superpowers?"Spot Conlon is Sunspot, one of the many heroes in New York. Racetrack Higgins is Spot's boyfriend, and a fan of Sunspot.





	1. The Wave

**Author's Note:**

> Aus like this scare the heck out of me because I never think I can do them. But I love them because they push me out of my comfort zone.

You may not know it, but superheroes have bad days too. Sometimes their hair looks bad. Sometimes they oversleep and run late. Sometimes the literal anti-them destroys the city they love and they’re forced to cancel all their plans to go stop their nemesis.   
So yeah, superheroes have bad days too, a fact Spot Conlon was learning well. Nothing had gone right that day so far, and putting on his suit hadn’t changed much. He’d been late for work, Race had called off their anniversary lunch date for a family restaurant emergency, and now The Wave was terrorizing Little Italy. 

“Of all the villains,” Spot grumbled to himself as he leapt from rooftop to rooftop, “it had to be The Wave. And of all the places in New York, it had to be Little Italy. Obviously.”

He jumped to the top of a building , and the scene that unfolded there didn’t make him any happier.   
From what he could tell, the entire street was underwater. Tables and chairs from restaurants were being swept downstream, along with as many people as the flood could carry. Helicopters from as many television news stations as he could count chopped up the air around him, effectively making the torrents worse than they were before. Screams of people and sirens carried across the water’s surface and hurt his ears.   
He could feel spotlights and cameras turn to point at him, and he did his best to look more heroic than he felt, giving the people watching at home a confident smile and nod before taking a deep breath, jumping off the building, and bursting into flames. The heat was just enough to boil the water he walked through, paving a path for him to walk. 

“Wave!” he yelled down the street. His voice boomed and so many people turned their heads to look at him that he thought all of Manhattan must have heard him. 

This was what Spot loved about being a superhero. Sean Conlon may have been brave, but he never could have done was Sunspot was doing. Right now, he was totally in control: literally burning through any obstacle that dared to stand in his way. 

“It’s Sunspot!” someone shouted from behind him, and The Wave finally turned to look at him. 

Sunspot made eye contact with his nemesis, and as he did he released just enough heat to evaporate much of the water around him.   
The Wave, at the same time, flooded the street almost twice as high. Sunspot was caught off his guard, and was swept away by the current. 

After he came up for air and got his bearings back, Spot’s eyes searched for The Wave. This time, what he saw made a part of him want to go back underwater.   
There was no way to mistake the head of blonde curls that was screaming for help. Race Higgins’ leg was pinned under an oven from a restaurant - presumably his own - and the water was rising to cover his mouth. The Wave was watching Race intently, chuckling wickedly as he poured more water over his face. As if Spot’s day could have gotten any worse.   
He had to bite his tongue to keep from swearing; the agency could fire him if a news station caught and aired footage of him cursing. 

“Wave!” Spot yelled again. “Let him go!” 

His blood began to boil, and as it did, his hands began glowing with licks of fire. He threw the flames down the street, boiling away the water, and narrowly missing both Race and The Wave.   
He had captured The Wave’s focus though, and Sunspot watched as his enemy turned his attention away from Race and towards him. Race sputtered as the water level decreased, and Spot smiled with the reassurance that his boyfriend was safe for the time being. 

Sunspot moved forward, each step being taken onto dry land that he created. 

“You have one chance,” he declared, “to leave now. Leave before I turn you into a puddle.”

The Wave laughed loudly, dumping gallons of water over Sunspot, who turned his body heat high enough that the water couldn’t touch him without becoming vapor. His body glowed and steamed as he stepped forward again, reaching his arms out toward The Wave.   
None of what the villain did past that point could have made a difference. The Wave made a squelching noise as Sunspot followed through on his promise. 

“Little anti-climactic,” Spot chuckled as he pushed himself skyward. During the few seconds he was able to stay in the air, Sunspot’s body heat vaporized the remaining water in the street. 

He fell back to the ground, leaving a tiny crack in the cement. Lifting himself up to stand, he looked up and down the street. Most people waved at him, brushing themselves off and returning to their lives. Some people came up to him, shaking his hand and thanking him. Little kids stared up at him in awe, hugging his legs and thanking him in Italian. Spot reached down to hug them back, and to murmur the little phrases of Italian he knew back to them, “You’re welcome,” and “Hi kid.”

It took a long time to get through every little boy and old woman who wanted to meet him. Once they cleared away, he stole one last glance at the Higgins’ restaurant, where he saw Race was still sitting on the curb, visibly shaken with his head in his hands. 

Spot couldn’t help himself. Secret identity be damned, there was no way he was letting his boyfriend sit there distressed. He walked over to Race. 

“Hi,” he spoke softly, setting a gentle hand on Race’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Race nodded, looking down the street to where The Wave had stood when he was drowning him. 

“Never much liked swimming,” Race’s face darkened as he tried to make a joke. 

Spot chuckled lowly, his heart sinking at the way Race handled these things. He always had to go and make a joke out of it, even when he had almost died. 

“You’re okay though, yeah?” he asked. 

Race nodded once more, this time looking directly at Sunspot’s face. Spot thought he saw recognition on Race’s face, but the look died before he could be certain. 

“Good,” Spot stood up. On an impulse, he stuck out his hand to help Race up. Race took the hand extended to him and pulled himself up. Spot tried to drop his hand and move way, but Race held on tighter and pulled Spot back. It caught Spot by surprise, and he considered breaking away from Race and making a run for it, but he couldn’t bring himself to. 

“Sean?” Race whispered. 

Spot’s stomach dropped, and without a moment’s hesitation, he dragged Race through the door of the nearest storefront. He looked around to ensure they were alone, and pulled up the small orange mask from around his eyes. 

“Hi Tony,” Spot braced for anything that could come out of his boyfriend’s mouth. 

“You… have superpowers?”

“Okay. So as far as reactions to finding out your boyfriend is a superhero,” Spot raised his eyebrows, “that one seems pretty logical.”

“You asshole!” Race smacked his shoulder. “Why wouldn’t you tell me you were secretly my favorite superhero?”

“Aw, I didn’t know I was your favorite,” Spot smiled. 

“I didn’t know either! That’s the problem-”

“Okay, okay, good point,” Spot held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry for not telling you. But I could have been fired if I did, you understand that, right? Oh god they can fire me now,” he blinked with realization. 

Race’s eyes widened as he finished computing the information. When Spot opened his mouth to speak again, Race interrupted. 

“Wait a second,” he jerked his head up. “Can I be the guy in the chair?”

“Race, how many times did you watch that movie?”

Race shrugged, and Spot stepped over to him. 

“Okay, we don’t need a guy in a chair: this isn’t Spiderman. But you might be in luck, ‘cause my contract says that I have to bring you in. If they say you can be trusted, then you get to see the agency.”

“Okay, but what if-” Race faltered. “What if they don’t think I’m trustworthy?”

“I’m not totally sure,” Spot pursed his lips and threw a jacket over the top of his suit before taking Race’s hand. “But I really hope they think you are.”


	2. The Agency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Take your boyfriend to work day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thanks so much for the love ive received for this fic! It means so much to me.

They arrived at the agency by way of the subway. 

“What?” Spot asked indignantly to the look Race gave him. “It’s easy and faster than anything else.”

“But you’re-”

Spot glared. Race lowered his voice.

“You’re Sunspot!” he whispered. “Can’t you like, get there super fast with your strength?”

“Yeah, I could. But I can’t, because you’re with me. Good job, loser, making me take the subway. Also, I don’t need news stations on my ass everytime I go to work. And it takes a lot of work to deal with that. Subway’s less stressful, believe it or not.”

Race rolled his eyes and pretended not to hear Spot, but he was interested again when they walked behind a row of strollers in the station. 

“Okay, wait, what?” Race grabbed Spot’s arm. 

Spot shrugged, took his boyfriend’s hand, and kept going. 

“Nope. Hold on here, Sean,” Race stopped in his tracks. “I don’t know what prank you’re pullin’ here-”

“Tony. Do you want them to say I can trust you?”

“Yeah, but I’m tryin’ to tell you-”

“Then,” Spot pulled Race out of earshot from the passersby, “you’re going to have to trust me here, alright? I know what I’m doin’. I’ve done it before. Let me do this.”

Race nodded, pressing his lips together. Spot grinned, happy from his win; he kissed Race’s cheek quickly and pulled him forward.  
He was unexpectedly shoved off. 

“Come on, asshole. I want to see this.”

-

Down the elevator they went, the one that no one knew about. Race’s jaw was slack already, and Spot chuckled to himself over it. 

“Pretty cool, huh, babe?” he asked, the pet name wrenching Race out of his dream world and back to reality. Or maybe, Spot thought, the reality was Race’s dream world. 

“Yeah, this is great,” Race grabbed Spot’s hand and kissed his lips gently. “I was a little pissed at you for lying, but this is so worth it.”

“This isn’t the beginning of it.”

Race raised his eyebrows and giggled. 

The elevator opened to reveal a dark room, busy with clutter and people running in all directions. Some of it looked like Spot’s office at the law firm, at least in that people were pouring over files and having intense discussions. At the same time, none of it was like his business. Desks were spread out over the entire room, and then beyond. Not to mention the fact that half the people who weren’t sitting at desks were wearing tights. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Spot spied one of his friends doing nothing. 

“Captain!” Spot clutched his boyfriend’s hand, and pulled his arm close as the pair made their way to the blonde boy in the corner. 

“Oh my god,” Race whispered as they took long strides. “Is that-”

“Captain Cannon? Yeah it is.”

“Isn’t that Crutchie?”

Spot paused, breathing in deeply. “Well, yeah. That’s Crutchie.”

“Did you just say that Crutchie is Captain Cannon?” Race hit Spot’s arm as hard as he could. 

“Shut up, hold on a second. If you recognize anyone else, don’t say it. You know too much at this point.”

“Sunspot,” Captain Cannon stood up, supporting himself with a chair. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, speaking as your friend, Captain, and as a civilian, you remember my boyfriend, right?” Spot gestured to Race. 

“Uh, yeah, Race right? Spot, what is he doing here?”

“That’s actually what I’m here to talk about, Crutchie. D’you know where Agent Larkin is?” Spot smiled urgently. 

“Uh, yeah, she’s over-” Crutchie pointed away from him. 

“Thanks a lot, man!” Spot waved at his friend as he dragged his boyfriend toward Medda Larkin’s desk. 

Agent Medda Larkin was a tall dark lady, whose glare could make even the most energetic superhero or villain stand to attention. 

“Agent Larkin, uh, so tiny problem-” Spot rested one hand on her desk. 

“Yes, Sunspot?” she looked up, and blinked at the boys over her desk. “Oh. I see. This is your boyfriend, yes? Anthony?”

“Uh, yeah, he is. Medda, have you ever met him before?”

“Well, not in person. But you knew that we were monitoring you, Sean. That means we’ve got databases on who you interact with, and it was really only a matter of time until Race here found out, really,” Agent Larkin tilted her head, a tiny smile on her face. 

“Hold on,” Race stopped her, one hand tightening on Spot’s. “You’ve been watching me?”

“If it makes you feel better,” Medda actually smiled this time, but kindly, as if she were talking to a child. “We’ve always known you could be trusted. You wouldn’t mess up anything, not when it comes to your boyfriend here, isn’t that right?”

Spot blinked. How much had the agency actually seen of him and Race?

“Oh, he’ll mess up a lot of things, Racer will,” a voice from behind Spot and Race shouted, and a hand landed on each of their backs. 

The two of them turned around, and Race’s jaw fell to the floor. 

“I’ll leave you to look around the agency, Tony,” Medda laughed. “It’s probably more familiar to you than you thought.”

“Hi Spot, Race,” said the person standing behind them, whose face Race was studying intently, trying to figure out if his eyes were deceiving him. 

“Goddamnit,” Spot breathed heavily and took hold of his boyfriend’s shoulders, turning him to look him in the eyes. “So, Race. I work with most of the city’s best superheroes. Coincidentally, we know a lot of them. Crutchie’s one. And of course, you know Jack.”

“Please,” Jack Kelly threw his head back with a smile. “Call me Rogue.”

“Jack Kelly is Rogue?” Race’s eyes looked like dinner plates. “Like… Rogue? Vigilante born from poverty, worked his way up to the top then left it all to do what was right Rogue?”

“The very same,” Spot nodded. “Look, can we just kinda go over this all later? You’re gonna wanna talk about this all, but I’d rather do that at home. So learn now, talk later, yeah?”

Race nodded softly, still staring at Jack. 

“Spot you really shouldn’t be like that,” Jack called after his friends, swiftly moving away from him. “When Davey first showed up I-”

“Shut up, Jack!” 

-

“Alrighty, you’ve met Jack and Crutchie and me, of course, so… here.” He dragged Race across the room to a large silver desk with three computer monitors. A head of dark hair was all that could be seen behind them, but once they walked around, Race recognized the features immediately. 

“Davey?” Race stuck his head out, shaking it incrementally as he did so. 

“Yeah?” David replied, barely registering what was happening outside of his screen. 

“So this is David Jacobs, our resident genius, biologist, chemist, nerd, and boyfriend of Jack and Crutchie,” Spot said, laughing at David’s reaction. 

“I’ve met Davey before,” Race said, “at the holiday party at Jack’s place. What’s his superhero name?”

“Don’t have one,” David answered, typing in furiously. “I’m not a hero. I’m just the science guy, working in the lab.”

Race laughed. “So you’re the guy in the chair?”

That did get Davey to look up, glance around, and chuckle. “No, that’s Sarah. I’m like the Spiderman without the spider bite.”

Spot pulled Race away from David’s desk. “Davey’s responsible for the powers of about half the people here. And a few of the villains, but we don’t talk about that much.”

“Oh, okay. He mentioned Sarah?”

“Oh, yeah. Our gal in the chair.”

Sarah Jacobs did in fact sit in a chair at a desk, but so did everyone else. Unlike everyone else, she wasn’t working on a computer. She was pouring over a map of Brooklyn, drawing lines on it that stretched over blocks. 

“She’s a strategical boss. Any of these heroes’ best moves, they come from her. And she does her best thinking on paper, not on a screen,” Spot whispered reverently. 

“Hold on. Holy shit,” Race gaped at Sarah’s desk, where a tall girl in a red purple pantsuit had sat down. “Is that who I think it is?”  
The girl leaned down to kiss Sarah gently. 

“If you think it’s Minerva it is. Sarah’s girlfriend, Katherine. She’s got the gadgets and the physical training, and she’s ready to fight at any given moment if something’s not right.” 

“Woah. Y’know she made me think I was straight for a while?”

“No, really?” Spot turned to look at Race. “That’s so weird.”

They looked at each other for a few seconds, both of them trying to get some kind of grip on the kind of day they’d had. 

“You know what? I think you’ve had about enough for today. There’s plenty of other superheroes, but those are the ones you know well. So let’s go get an anniversary dinner, and talk about what you need to know.”

Race nodded, relieved to be done. 

-

The two boys sat in sweatpants in the middle of their living room that night, Race’s head on Spot’s chest, exhausted and gorging themselves on takeout. 

“Is that why your feet are never cold in bed?”

“Yeah. Anything else you want to know?” 

“Well, it’s the one thing I keep thinkin’ about. See, I read and watched all the interviews you and Rogue and Captain Cannon and Minerva ever gave. Yours I watched over and over, and practically memorized,” Race moved his arm so it was resting on Spot’s shoulder. “And the thing I liked most about you was your backstory. But is it true?”

Spot sighed. “Yeah, it is. That really happened.”

“You saw him break into your school? With a gun?” 

Spot nodded. 

“And you saw him,” Race fidgeted with Spot’s fingers, “you saw him kill your friend?”

Spot swallowed. “Yeah. I was so pissed. I could have saved my best friend, and I didn’t. It was horrible. I worked out every day, promisin’ myself I could have done better, and that next time I would do better. That’s where Jack found me, in the gym lifting weights. He trained me up, and thought I was special or somethin’, because he asked Davey to enhance me. I was the first one David did any work on. He messed up, but it was good, because it gave me heat resistance. And so we went with it, and Davey learned how to make me control fire.”

“Wow. And all their backstories are real too?”

Spot nodded. 

“Oh my god Sean. I love you. You are literally a superhero, and you’re dating me. I dunno why, but I’m not gonna ask because you might say you don’t know either, and then where would we be?”

“I’m datin’ you because-”

“That’s not the point, Spot. I’m datin’ a superhero. That’s sick.”

“Oh, alright. I see.”

“I’m datin’ my favorite superhero.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you liked it, let me know what you thought!  
> Also I definitely do have origin stories and powers for like all the newsies characters, so if you want more of this series you should tell me that.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked the first chapter! Let me know what you think!


End file.
